Crumbs on the Floor

Back to where I was after being walloped with the news that uncle accused my mother of molesting him. 

Shortly after his visit to the detachment and his ridiculously feeble attempt to try and derail the file from going any further I am informed that charges have been recommended to the Crown Counsel and that a court date of Sept 14th, 2007 has been set.  This would be the first of my many heartbreaking misconceptions about how the "justice" system works.  I had no idea that the police "recommend" charges - I do know what the word "recommend" means in the real world but I thought that the police were the folks that laid the charges and that Crown Counsel represented the victims.  I was seriously mistaken and also very uniformed. 

The police make the arrests, take the statements, do all of the research into the Criminal Code as to what charges SHOULD be filed.......that is SHOULD not WILL.  In the province of BC the Crown Counsel holds all of the cards. The file goes to a gate keeping committee who decide if the case is winnable - simply put.  They are funding out of the public purse and they decide which files to pursue.  If they think it is unwinable than they bounce the file back and say thank you for your time and have a nice life.

I wait patiently for the entire summer to pass with my eyes on the prize of Sept 14th.  I cannot believe that in less than 2 months I will have the chance to go to court and see my abuser stand in front of a judge and have to answer either Not Guilty or Guilty.  I am ok with either plea because he is the one that will be crucified by the Crown Counsel.  He is the one that will be presented with the sworn affidavidt of what he said to me in front of my therapist.  Bring it on. I even went and bought a new suit!!!

The week of Sept 10 - 14th was a week of chaos.  I had clients coming in from out of town that had to buy a house THAT week.  That is a pressure keg of a situation at the best of times!  I was frantic all week - the market was super fast, they were coming from Ontario and were really struggling with the huge price difference between here and there and I was wondering how the heck I was going to explain that I was going to be AWOL on Friday......oh by the way.....I know you need to buy a house but I have to go to court to watch my abuser enter a plea.....hope you understand........

Late Thursday afternoon after a grueling day of driving around looking at houses and trying to find new listings to look at we parted company - they to their hotel and me to the closest Starbucks for a much needed shot of caffeine. My phone rings.....it is the caseworker at a Private Organization who has someone ended up with my file to act as a messenger, etc. I hardly know this woman - she is so sweet and kind but I had never even met her - and she tells me........16 hours before I will have my day in court ..........that...........Crown Counsel has refused the charges.  I am silent - she asks me if I am still there.......yes I am but I have no idea what you are talking about.......I was given a court date of Sept 14th so how can it be that the afternoon ( conveniently after Crown Counsel office hours) before court you are telling me there is no court date, there are no charges and my file has been sent back to the detachment.  Stunned. Numb. Confused.  Hot tears pour down my cheeks as I sit in Starbucks trying to figure out what is going on.  I try calling the police officer - I get her voice mail.  She works Monday to Thursday and she is now off duty until Monday.  I call the main desk - I ask who would be taking her calls for her while she is off ( oh how naive I was ) I am told to leave her a voicemail and she will get it on Monday.  I try calling back the caseworker.......she has gone home for the day. 

I am sitting in Starbucks....all around me people are chatting, working on their laptops and just going about their day........while I feel like my world has worth nothing more than the crumbs on the floor from someone`s muffin.

The letter below was sent to my 5 aunts - and I am sad to say that I did not receive any answers to my questions.  I rec'd a 2 line letter from one aunt and an email from another aunt that really had nothing to do with my letter. 

At the time that I wrote this email to them my police officer was fighting fiercely to provide Crown Counsel any little bit of information that she could to assist them in moving forward with the recommended charges. I wrote this email and forwarded it to her for her approval, corrections on any dates, etc. and confirmation that it would not jeopordize the file in anyway. 

 Crown Counsel in BC are the office that takes the police files and decides if the charges will be laid.  I understand that in other provinces the police lay the charges and Crown moves ahead with defence.  If that were the case in BC none of the 3 years of creating a file the size of that we did would have had to happen.  Trust me - I would have walked into that court room with my head held high while someone else would have folded like a cheap tent in the parking lot. 

The chief prosecutor who was assigned all of the sexual abuse/assualt cases looked at my file and all of the information and he spoke with my officer and he wanted to proceed but......he could not override  the gate keeping committee who made all decisions about whether charges were laid or not.  How's that for a kick in the heart?

This is the letter I sent:

I am about to share with you some very difficult information that you will likely find hard to read and hard to accept.  However, the time is right to expose a situation that has likely been perpetuated for many years within our family.  There is no doubt in my mind that this has been a generational issue and perhaps one of you reading this letter can even relate on a personal level.

For many years your brother, Bernard perpetrated a sexually abusive crime against me.  You should also know that I was not his first target but unfortunately I was the weaker person and found myself in a situation that took me many years to get out and one that I will likely be coping with the aftermath from for the rest of my life. 

In the summer of 2006 I started therapy to deal with the overwhelming anxiety that I had.  Anxiety to the point that I had great difficulty even leaving my home to go to work.  Anxiety that kept me from sleeping most nights.  Anxiety that was consuming most of my mental energy.  During the course of treatment I finally found a safe place where I could disclose the reason for my anxiety.  For the next 11 months, in a safe and trusting environment, I worked hard to get to a place where I was able to confront your brother with this accusation and to illustrate to him what the result of his actions had been on my life.  A Confrontation was scheduled for June 2, 2007 and your brother attended this meeting held with myself, himself and my therapist.  I read a letter which I had written to him.  After hearing this letter your brother offered up the following:  1/ that he had been sexually abused by 2 of his sisters and 2/ that "if it was an apology you want you've got it".  A direct self incriminating statement that was given in a most flippant and unremorseful manner.  And, in case you might be thinking that this is a situation of

” therapist induced memory,” his lack of denial, arrogant behavior and unfeeling apology are proof that I am not making any of this up. I had wanted this meeting to be one of healing and moving forward and I had hoped that he would be remorseful and ask for my forgiveness.  He did neither.

His arrogant attitude led me to make a very difficult decision - I asked my therapist to arrange for me to report this abuse to the RCMP.  On Tuesday June 12, 2007 I met with a detective from the Serious Crimes Division and spent 2 hours telling her things that I thought I would never ever have to tell another person. To illustrate the fact that the police detective believed me - I was given the decision to make - do I want to go ahead and have them arrest him at his home right at that time or did I want to give him the opportunity to come into the detachment and voluntarily present himself. I suspect that if she did not believe me this choice would not have been offered to me.  I chose to give him the opportunity to present himself which he did. The following Monday he was arrested, handcuffed and put into a cell and then interrogated by a detective.  At no time did he ever deny this allegation nor did he offer up a defense. He had however, obtained legal counsel by this time.

Following his arrest he asked to speak to the detective once again.  He met with her at the detachment where he disclosed the following to her:  That at the age of approx. 12 years old he was sexually abused by my mother.  This would mean that she would have been approx. 21/22 years of age and married to my father.  When this information was disclosed to me I cannot tell you how sick I felt. I sat down on the kitchen floor and cried.  There are only 2 choices here - either he is lying or he is telling the truth.  Since my mother is deceased I have no opportunity to even confront her with this statement.  Perhaps that is why he made this statement, knowing that she could never defend herself.  I don't know.  All I know is that today I am haunted by this allegation.  This file has gone before Crown Counsel who have asked for more information which I have since supplied.  The file will be going back to Crown Counsel in the near future.

The reason for this information being shared with you is this: if you can either confirm or provide proof that he is lying regarding any of his allegations I would very much appreciate that.  I can imagine how you might be feeling right at this point.  I've been there.  It's not pleasant.  But as I stated earlier, I have no doubt that I was not the first victim of sexual abuse in this family over the past generations and unless this is confronted and dealt with I will not be the last.  I have paid a very high price for this "secrecy".   Perhaps I may not have even suffered the abuse that I did if this had been dealt with in a previous generation.  But, I am dealing with it now.  I only wish my mother were alive so that I could have the truthful answers that I desperately need.  I'll also accept that you may feel this is just too awful to even think about and choose to not respond.  I welcome your positive responses but please, before you respond, understand that I am not capable of dealing with any negative or harsh replies at this time.  I only want to know the truth as dealing with the unknown is far harder than learning to accept the known.  If you were in my place would you not want to know? 

I have to ask this question:  Why is the truth so hard for some people to face? The truth shall set you free.  Hiding your head in the sand so that you cannot see all that is happening around you will only result in you not seeing the boot aimed directly for your ass. I love this sentence!  A fellow Realtor shared it with me and the simplistic truth of it is just too good not to pass on! 

"Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest"

And......we're off - let the games begin!  The file is open and a number has been assigned - I am now known as #07-20901. Next on the to do list for the RCMP is to interview my abuser.  I elected to allow him to present himself at the detachment and I'm told that he was there lickety split after the officer called him and offered him his choices.

Oh how I wish I could have been a fly on the wall but I had to settle for a verbal description of the event.  He appeared at the front counter and asked for the officer.  He had no clue what was about to happen but he was officially invited to be a guest at the crowbar hotel!  The officer met him at the front counter, read his rights and just like - on went the silver bracelets and down into the bowels of the detachment and into a cell.  Where.....he was given the privelege of having a moment or two to himself before the real fun started!

About 30 minutes later he was taken from the cell and brought up to a "hard" interview room and his video/audio taped interview was underway.  There was no doubt in anyone`s mind that he was guilty of alot of bad behaviour - he had openly admited it 10 days ago - and the goal of the interview was to have to him verbally say the `word``. Which didn`t happen. At some point he had retained a lawyer - one that was relatively unknown in the finer circles in Langley.  He couldn`t very well go to one of the law offices that had handled conveyancing for his office for the past 30 years so he opted for Plan B. The officer called me after he had left to apprise me of all the information that she could without breaching any Privacy Act issues.  She did coroborate a lot of my dates, etc. that I had given and locations etc. but she couldn`t nail him down not even when she told him that my therapist would be providing a statement to go with my file to Crown Counsel.

Two days later on a blistering hot afternoon my phone rings.  It is the officer calling to tell me that my abuser had called her and asked her if he could come and talk to her!  Would this be the day that he would admit his guilt and stop this train from going down the tracks and picking up speed......would this be the day that he would man up and admit to what he had done so that I could have my day in court and my restitutionÉ  She told me that both she and another female officer interviewed him for 2 hours solid and so many times they had him in a corner and he was so close to `the word`but he held out.  But of the tales of woe he laid on them about his dysfunctional life and he tried to use the `pity`card.  One of those tales of woe that he told them literally took my feet out from underneath me.

As I had been listening to the officer I was walking around the kitchen putting things away and suddenly she grew quiet.  `` There is something I have to tell you Michelle`she said. `` Your uncle said that he was abused by 2 of his sisters and also your mother.  She had sex with him when he was 12 and that left him feeling so confused because he knew what happened was wrong but it felt right. I`m so sorry Michelle to tell you this.`
Silence.  I was on the floor, fighting to breathe, my gut totally tied in a knot. The feeling you get when you get really bad news.  I had dropped the phone on the way down and managed to prop myself up against a cupboard and pick up the phone.  The officer was calling my name, asking if I was ok, apologizing for what she had told me. She needed more information and she wondered if she could come and see me.  Not. I did not want a police car in front of my home. I told her that I would take a few moments and then come up to the detachment. I hung up the phone and I laid on the floor and sobbed. Sobbed because a useless waste of skin had accused a dead women of the most indecent act, sobbed because she wasn`t here to comfort me and protect me, sobbed because I was the one that had been abused for 20 years and had once more just been àbused`` in a most painful way. More painful than any act of the 20 years prior. Sobbed because I realized that this `file`was rapidly spiraling out of control and I had been the one to open Pandora`s box and this was my punishment.

I appeared at the front desk at the detachment and then went outside to sit in the sun by myself.  A few moments later the officer appeared and ushered me into a `soft`interview room - 2 doors on either side locked, a table and chair and a couch. No tape recorder, no video tape here just her notebook.  I told her that there was no way that my mother could have done that to him because she was already married and living in another city.  I told her the family dynamics and how dysfunctional his generation`s family life had been and that there was no doubt in my mind whatsoever that there was abuse going on.  I believe that my Grandfather was abusive to some of the older girls, and whether this had in turn happened to the younger boys in the family I did know nor could I speculate.  But there was no doubt that there was abuse going on behind those 4 walls.

This day was one of many of the `bad`days that were to come.  The emotions ranged from complete hatred for this man who would say such a horrible thing about my mother to despair.  I felt very exposed, vulnerable, unloved and unprotected.  I wanted to go over to his house and scream at the top of my lungs on his front lawn every obscenty I could come up with. `` Trust in the system Michelle`I was told. Lesson /2 - do not trust in the system.

Is It Really Possible To Lose Your Mind?? Or Just Misplace It.

Once the legal process was underway my emotional health was tested severely.  Days would go by waiting for promised calls, days would arrive with calls of disappointing news, months would go by waiting for Crown Counsel to either reward me with my day in court or bounce my file back to the detachment yet again looking for even more information. These 3 years were the hardest years of this entire journey and during these years was when I truly felt like I was being blown into a million little pieces. I toss this chapter in here because as I try my best to recount those 3 years I can dispense with the long winded explanation of "losing one's mind" from my perspective.

Have you ever said these words " I'm going to lose my mind"? Anyone with offspring will say that approx. 10 times per day! But......have you ever said those words to your therapist in a desperate plea for someone to help you, to rescue you because you are so worn down by the feelings of the fear, the panic, the anxiety and the pain?  I have used those words more than once and I have used them when I truly, deep in my soul felt like I was coming apart in all directions.

I have sat on my couch in the middle of the day with all of the blinds closed, huddled under the quilt absolutely terrified that I will not be able to look after myself for the rest of the day, never mind the rest of the week or my life. I have poured myself into a seat on an American Airlines 757 bound for Dallas, Texas to fall into the safe arms of my best friend in the entire world.  I have made that trip at the strong suggestion of my therapist that I go far away, into the sunshine and escape the constant "poke and jab" that the legal system was laying on me.  Note: It is a legal system not a justice system.  I have laid on the floor hugging my dog as though she were a life raft and I a drowning soul. I have had to pull over and park because my panic attack was consuming every grey cell in my brain.  I have walked into the doctors' office convinced that I was having a heart attack and I needed to be somewhere safe.  What I received was a shot in the arm of 10ml of Valium that never even fizzed on the best part of me other than to slow down my breathing. The average person would be out like a light for several hours with that dose but I walked to the lab (much to the utter amazement of the tech), had an ecg and blood work done and walked home and was still wide awake 3 hours later when the dr called to tell me that I had not had a heart attack - no surprise to anyone but simply a matter of protocal whenever someone presents with chest pains.  I have walked into the dr's office looking like a homeless person in my pajamas and completely distraught and when asked why I was so upset - I had no words to string together to even answer that question.  I'm not sure which was scarier to the doctors - me showing up in the throes of a "heart attack" or me showing up looking like a homeless person!  If you want to get right in to see the dr try one of the above!

I finally came up with a description of how I felt so that I could explain to all of my various caregivers just what was going on in my head.  I told them that I felt like a big jigsaw puzzle.  I was all put together - ok sort of put together! - and then I started therapy and my puzzle started to come apart and then I entered the dark world of the legal system and all of the pieces blew apart and landed on the floor.  My job was to learn how to put those pieces all back together one at a time which I have finally succeeded in doing so.  But....along would come a demon of the past or present and I would feel like I had been swept off of the table and I was in a heap of pieces on the floor again.  Sometimes it was just a minor gust and only a few pieces hit the hardwood but there were some occasions when hurricane force winds swept my world off of the table, knocked every piece apart and tossed them haphazardly all over the room. I used this analogy for 4 years during my therapy to best explain my world at any given time.

So yes, it is possible to actually lose your mind but the good news is that if you just keep looking and patiently put the pieces back together enough times you can put your puzzle together and hang onto your mind. You will however lose the excuse of " I'm losing my mind" to get out of missed appointments, etc!!!

The Gray Drab Room

I've stewed about how to write this half of the blog.  This half details the 3 year epic journey through the legal system.  So many dates, so many notes, so many emails.....it's all overwhelming.  The dates I will be using need to be confirmed but the story is the same.

June 4, 2007

It's Monday morning so that means my usual weekly therapy session at 9am.  This one is going to be a doozy because on Saturday I had my confrontation with my abuser that my therapist organized and monitored.  In that meeting I read my letter to my abuser and at the end he flippantly apologized for what he had done.  He admited it! In front of my therapist!  But oh what a shallow, hollow, meaningless insincere "apology" it was.  I kinda think he was looking to save his ass and thought that his words would make it all go away.  Well they didn't.  I cried all day Sunday out of frustration and decided to take the next step.

Into Fred's office I go and I have barely sat down and said hello when I blurted out the words......I want to go to the police.  Holy dinah!  To know that 1 year before that he had advised me that there is no Statute of Limitations on these types of abuse and suggested going to the police.  My reaction that day was one of intense fear - I had been groomed for years to never say anything or bad things would happen and there was no way in hell that I was going to the police.

Fred, in a very calm manner, asked me what had changed my mind.  Simple answer: He had admitted his guilt in front of a 3rd party and he had zero remorse.  I'm sure Fred was the proverbial duck at that moment - calm and collected on the surface but swimming frantically under the water!!  We talked about the legal issues and potential liabilities/civil law suits and I decided that I needed to get some legal advice before I went to the police.  Fred called my lawyer and explained the situation and why I needed to see him and the appointment was set for the next day.

June 5, 2007

I think the world of my lawyer.  He is a lovely devoted family man who has numerous photos of his children and grandchildren in his office and loves to point out the newest addition whenever he can.  To know that I was going to walk into his office and cause him hurt and embarrasement by disclosing my situation was very hard.  He gave me a big hug and asked me a few questions and told me that I had nothing to worry about from a civil suit perspective and told me he was proud of the way I was taking a stand. That went well!

June11, 2007

It's Monday again and here I am back in Fred's office.  We said our good mornings and I swallowed hard and said......I'm ready to go to the police.  Fred works closely with the police in their troubled youth division so thankfully he knows his way around the detachment. Usual circumstances would dictate that I would have to enter at the front counter and tell my story to whichever officer on General Duty was available and that office would then pass the file over to Serious Crimes and from there an officer would be assigned to my file.  All of which could take days if not weeks.  Fred excused himself and phoned the Superintendent of the entire detachment ( a very lovely lady I might add!) and she personally handpicked a constable to handle my file.  I found out later that this did not sit well with the female corporal head of Serious Crimes! The meeting was set for the next day at 1pm at the detachment. I had absolutely no idea what I was about to walk into. 

I'm sitting on the bench in the waiting area with Fred.  I have a water bottle in my hands that I was twisting so hard in my hands I rubbed the ink off of the bottle. I am sitting right by the door.  In a nanosecond I could be up off that bench and out the door. That thought crossed my mind a thousand times in those few minutes. Everywhere around me officers are chatting and going about their day - it is after all just another day at the office for them.  For me.......I feel like I am about to sent to the chamber of doom.

The door opens and a tall dark haired female officer steps out and nods to Fred.  This is it.......I am about to walk thru that secured door by myself and I will not come back out the same person that went in. The tension in the air is palbable as Fred rises to his feet and looks at me, waiting for me to do the same.  I want to throw up but I can't because I can't breathe.  He takes me by the arm - gently but firmly - and steers me in the direction of the "door".  The officer introduces herself - her name is Michelle - well now at least we have something to make small talk about as we go up to the next floor in the elevator. The door opens and all I can see are rows of desks and I hear the sounds of officers talking.  Interior decorating is not in the budget of the RCMP but apparently they get a smokin' rate on drab green/gray paint because it is everywhere.  I follow Michelle down a short hall and she opens the door to a room and motions for me to enter.  Now, how dumb am I - I think we are going into a private office like a doctor's office so that we can talk in private.  Well think again!  This room is a grey box.  There is no window.  There is a table with 2 chairs.  There is a camera mounted above the table aimed directly at the chair I will sit in.  There is no clock on the wall.  Nothing. The door shuts with a loud bang and scares the hell out of me. I am directed to sit in the far chair. I am in the "hard" interview room I will come to learn.

And so it begins.  The most humiliating, terrifying, gut wrenching, embarrassing, soul splitting experience. Out onto the table goes a tape recorder and the officer hits the play button.  She reads aloud the date and time and her name and mine.  She turns to me and advises me that this interview will be both audio and videotaped.  I nod my head.  Lesson 1 - all answers have to be spoken so that the tape can record it.  " Yes" I say, "I understand and agree".  And with that......the 2 1/2 hour regurgitation of 20 years of my life begins. I am very proud of the fact that I never cried once during those 2 1/2 hours. I gave all of the information in as much detail as I could.  At the end of the interview the tape is turned off and I feel absolute exhaustion. The officer turns to me and tells me that she is going to have him arrested but that I can make the choice of how he appears at the detachment.  She will send a marked car over to his house, arrest him and bring him for questioning or she can call him and ask him to appear at the detachment on his own within the next 24 hours.  I chose to take the high road and asked her to call him and allow him to present himself.  Oh how I wish I could take that choice back.  We are done, she and I, and she opens the door and the cool fresh air conditioning hits my face and I am suddenly aware of how hot I am and how flushed I feel. She leads me to the elevator and walks me out of the detachment.  I cannot look at her.  She knows so much horrible stuff about me know.  She walks a bit further down the side of the outside wall, out of range of the security camera and gives me a big hug and tells me how sorry she is that we met under these circumstances.  She promised she would do her absolute best to see that the charges she is going to recommend to the Crown Counsel will be approved.  I thanked her for her kindness and understanding and went home at 3:30pm and went to bed for the rest of the day blissfully unaware of how the next 3 years were going to be an emotional battle that would bring me to my knees more than once.

A Huge Mistake

I've been spending time organizing my emails, etc. that I have saved/received/sent during the time from when my file was opened with the RCMP until the day that I slammed it closed on May 25, 2009 - the result of a phone call that blew my world into a million little pieces.  I made the mistake of rereading the letter of complaint that I sent to the Superintendent of the Detachment at that time.  A big mistake.  A huge mistake.  I thought that I had neatly packaged all of that up but what I discovered in the past few weeks is that the cruel words of that phone call are still very near the surface. 

This has not been a good thing.  I have stirred up emotions and feelings that should have been left alone. The black is coming back and I am fighting to breathe and rise above it once again.  I am trying hard to push through this on my own, to not burden my friends with my neediness, to focus on the good as much as I can.  I am fighting with that need to not be alone but to be by myself - if that makes any sense. This is where Esme is my lifesaver.  Her needs will always come before mine.  Without her, I don't think life would be worth the fight.

Take Me As I Am..........

I've been sorting and organizing all of my emails, notes, official papers, etc. that pertain to my adventure with the "justice" system.  First thing anyone must learn and embrace when dealing with the courts is this:  It is a LEGAl system not a JUSTICE system.  Until you can embrace that and prepare yourself to be disappointed more than you ever have before do not go to the police.  It is not the police officers' fault - it is our stupid, antiquainted, out moded, "accused has all the rights" system that we in Canada are stuck with. 

When you go to the police and have your statement taken there are many steps to be followed which I will share with you in future posts.  Here is the lesson that I learned the hard and painful way and I had to wait until I was knee deep in pain, humiliation, embarassement and frustration to be educated. The first step is that the police recommend whatever charges they can to Crown Counsel - who let's all understand this one fact - are there to defend the victim of the crime.  Step one at Crown is that the file goes to a "gatekeeping" committee who reiviews the file and makes the decision as to whether to press charges and forward the file to the appopriate prosecutor or to bounce the file back to the police.  Here is the criteria that the file must meet to be accepted:

1. Is this a winnable case?  Reason: It is the public's money that is being spent at Crown so they only take on cases that they are sure they can win.  LOVELY.
2. Will the victim be a credible witness in a court room?  And they can tell this from a bunch of paper?  They must be pyschic.

There are 3 more criteria that are just as meaningless to a victim.  My RCMP officer actually took my file to the Court House and met with the prosecutor who handles all of the sex crime files and from what I was told he felt the file was worthy of taking to court but even he can't over ride the committee at the front door. That hurt me right to the core.  I know for a fact that my abuser would have folded like a cheap tent the first time he even parked in the parking lot at the Court House.  I know that he would have either had to plead guilty or hire some lawyer to defend him and then the prosecutor would have had the chance to rip him to shreds on the stand.  I know that I was cheated out of the opportunity to be able to write and read a Victim's Impact Statement.  It felt like being abused all over again.  I grieved deeply for a year as I tried to accept the fact that I would never be able to have justice.  I still grieve for that loss and I probably will for the rest of HIS life.

So.........before I sit down and piece together 3 years of RCMP interviews,etc. let me leave you with this:


I might not be someone's first choice, However, I am a great choice.
I don't pretend to be someone I'm not, because I'm good at being me.
I might not be proud of some of the things I've done in the past, however, I'm proud of who I am today.
I may not be perfect, however, I don't need to be.
Take me as I am, or watch me as I walk away.

The Letter

Please - before you read any further I need you to know that there are some hard truths in the following post that may be uncomfortable for you to read. 

June 2, 2007 - One of those life altering moments......afte a year of therapy I had finally reached the place where I was ready to confront my abuser in the presence of my therapist.  What did I hope to gain?  I wanted to see him in a very vulnerable position - something he had done to me for 20 years. I wanted him to be face to face with me and have to look me and either admit that he had done this to me or watch him try to lie his way out of the reality.  I wanted him to hurt to the core although I now know that he is a sociopath and they tend to have no remorse or guilt for any action.  I wanted him to see that I was no longer under his influence of fear and that he now needed to be fearful of me and what further action I might take.  I wanted him to know that he was now a marked man.

My therapist arranged for this meeting.  I was to wait in the parking lot until Fred came out to get me. All the way up in the elevator I was trying to breathe and be strong but the minute the door opened I turned against the wall and tried to go back onto the elevator.  Fred put his arm around my shoulder and literally took me into his office - I had to walk past my uncle who was sitting in the waiting area.  I had some time alone with Fred to pull myself together and then he was invited in and sat on the other side of the office with Fred on a chair beside me.  I started to read my letter and the tears began to drop onto the paper blurring the ink.  I never made eye contact with him once.  I finished reading my letter and I am not sure what really happened next but I do remember him saying that he knew exactly how I felt because he had been abused by 2 of his sisters.  The lamest most pathetic statement : he knew how I felt?  A bit more babbling on his part and then he finally said the words that I wanted to hear " Well if it's an apology that you want, you've got it." He said it very flippantly in an almost mocking tone of voice. But - he admitted to his actions.  Surely this would be the statement that could be used against him......  I still had not raised my head to look at him and finally Fred sent him on his way and then worked with me for awhile so that I could go home.  I still have that letter - blurred ink where my tears fell - and I have placed it in my memory box.  The events of that afternoon led to a very pivotal point in my journey.  I soon became file #07-20901 with the Langley RCMP Serious Crimes.

The letter:

I want to thank you for coming here today.  When I heard that you had been very agreeable to this meeting I wondered if you had any idea why you have been asked here.  Today is the day that my existing life is over and I begin working on building a brand new life.  A life that is going to be filled with joy, love, peace, confidence, happiness and a sense of being safe.  For 30 years I have not experienced these feelings and I grieve for a life not lived.

In 1976 your actions towards me sent me down a path of life that has done nothing but cause me pain and sorrow.  I missed out on having the life that I dreamt about.  I have never had a normal relationship with a man, I never married and had the children that I so badly wanted to have and I have never had the partner in life that I deserve and desire. My heart hurts inside for the life that I lost and I wonder if I will have the time, opportunity and courage to ever have that life.   All because you chose to prey on and seduce me.  I know that I wasn’t your first choice.  I know that you made a move on my sister but she was strong enough to rebuff you and despises you to this day.  But it didn’t take you long to realize that I would be easier prey.  I was the chubby child who had tried unsuccessfully to be good enough for her father and who was repeatedly told how much she reminded her mother of her father, a man she hated.

I had never really known you when I was a child and first met you when I was about 17 years old in the summer of 1976.  Growing up in a very dysfunctional family I had had no father/daughter relationship and you were the first male to really pay attention to me.  My mother was extremely distracted at the time – she had just fled a dangerous situation with my dad, she was in a new relationship with a man that was as equally dysfunctional as my father and she was dealing with a lot of hostility from Allison.  My mother also really adored you and she looked up to you.  You were her saviour when she arrived in Coquitlam.  And when I flew in to have a visit with my mother before leaving for school I, a young, shy teenager, met you – and I was mesmerized.  You paid so much attention to me, you treated me like an adult, you flirted with me – in front of your girlfriend Barb - and my mother missed every inappropriate action.  I saw you again at Christmas time.  Do you remember the trip to Princeton to see the new store?  Do you remember asking me to sit beside you in the car? 

The summer of 1977 you did something so inappropriate, that today, 30 years later, I still cry whenever I think of that night.  You attempted to seduce me in front of your fireplace and later crawled into bed with me and ran your hand up my leg. I was so inexperienced and naïve.  I knew that something was wrong but I didn’t know how to stop you.  Saying “no” to my father had always resulted in either being yelled at or hit, so I had learned at an early age that “no” didn’t work for me.  You bragged to me so many times how many women you had slept with – that you couldn’t even remember the number.  I was clearly way out of my league here and you took complete advantage of me.  There was no one to talk to, no one to save me from your intentions.  I got on a plane and went back to school with a horrible secret that scared me and embarrassed me. 

Christmas 1977 - my mother invited you and Tony to spend Christmas with our family in Princeton. It was arranged that you would pick me up at the airport in Vancouver and take me with you to Princeton. I had so hoped that you had either forgotten about what had happened or had realized how inappropriate it was.  The house was full of family and I thought that I would be safe there.  I was sleeping on the couch and woke up to find you on your knees beside me with your hand under the quilt on my thigh.  You begged me not to say anything to my mother. I cannot to this day believe that you were that bold as to pull a stunt like that with 5 other people sleeping within yards of that couch. How I wish now that you had been caught or that I had told my mother.  But, that would have ruined Christmas for everyone, so I said nothing.  That summer my mother, once again completely distracted by yet another dysfunctional relationship called upon you for help and you were only too happy to head down to Princeton to save her again. You were my Mother’s favorite brother and I think you took advantage of that. That night you took me to the Princeton Hotel bar – even though I was underage – and you treated me like a “date” not a niece.    My mother was fighting with everyone in the house and it was “suggested” that I come down to Langley to work with you and Phil in the store.  It took you a few days but you finally managed to finish what you had started the summer before.

Over the next 20 years you gave me diseases, you used me as your own private whore, you dragged me into your stupid little game of espionage to try to catch Marilyn in her affair and you even suggested once that you wanted to have another woman in bed with me at the same time.  Do you remember asking me if it would be ok if you found another guy so that you could hide in the closet and watch?  When I think of some of the things you said and did I am physically ill.  I cry every day for the life that was stolen from me, for the things that you did to me, for the shame that I feel, for the guilt I carry that I did not find the courage to stand up for myself against you. You will never ever know how you ruined my life.  You are a sexual predator and a sexual deviant - you are exactly like your own father.   The 3 adults in my life that I should have been able to rely on either abandoned me or used me when I needed them the most.  My father emotionally and physically abused me, my mother was so distracted by all of the dysfunctional men in her life and trying to raise Louise on her own that she wasn’t emotionally available and you – You saw the weakness in me and you preyed on that. You could have been my “hero”, a mentor, someone that I could rely upon and trust, especially after my parents died when I was only 25 and 28 years old.   

 You stole from me my innocence, so many first experiences that should have been shared with someone who loved me and that I would be able to remember with tenderness and fondness, not embarrassment and disgust.  You single-handedly destroyed my life for your own simple pleasure. To this day I feel like damaged goods, it takes me forever to trust someone,  I feel starved for love and affection and would love nothing more than to be hugged but I am frightened beyond belief to have anyone touch me in an intimate way.  I struggle to feel safe even in my own home and I have worked hard at overcoming my anxiety about leaving my home.  I have many days when I do not want to live but yet I also do not want to die.  I am so envious of the solid family lives that I see around me, knowing I will never have that and that hurts me to the core. No one will ever call me “Mom or Grandma”.  I worry that I will die all alone.

 It is my hope that you can find it in your heart to show me some remorse, to apologize for the destruction you caused. I don’t know if I will be able to forgive you but that is one of my next tasks I will work on.  For 30 years I have carried a lot of pain in my heart and I know that you don’t have 30 years left to live, but I hope that every day that you do have left you think about what you did to me and feel just some of the pain that I have lived with and continue to live with to this day.

 Again, thank you for coming here and allowing me to read this letter to you as part of my journey of healing.  I would ask that you never contact me again.

The Crash

Okey Dokey.........been a wild ride for that past few weeks.........anyone who has ever suffered from PTSD/Anxiety/Depression knows that every once in awhile, out of nowhere, when you least expect it...........kaboom..........you are hit with a "crash".  Sometimes these events are a day long, maybe a week........or sometimes they last for a long time and take you to the very depths of your soul.  Sometimes they are triggered by past events and sometimes they are triggered by numerous current events all piled one on top of the other.  Sometimes they are medication issues that need to be adjusted.  Whatever the cause of the "crash" the result is a dark, scary, heart broken place that you wonder if you even want to try to recover from.  When you open your eyes in the morning and your first thought is " oh crap....I can't do this another day" and you are in tears before you have even got out of bed, when you know that most people just don't "get it" and that this will be another day that you have to paste on some sort of phoney smile or better yet......just stay home, close the blinds to keep the world out and try very hard not to put your burden onto anyone else.........at a time when you most need these people it is very hard to make it all work. It's hard to find a reason to even want to make it all work.

That's where I've been for the past 6 weeks.  Some days were very very dark and other days were manageable.  There was the day I went to the doctor's in my pajamas and cried and said " I cannot do this another day".  There was the day that I fell apart in a total heap of rubble on the running trail because I was scared out of my wits when a man stepped out in front of me ( quite innocent on his part) but triggered the most frightening piece of my memories and before I could get a grip on my world I slowly fell apart to the point that my friend Laurel had to come and get me from the trail and I fell to my knees and sobbed.  There was the day I rec'd a few texts from a very dear friend that were rec'd by me in a very painful way - I thought my heart was truly breaking into pieces - if I put my hand on my heart I felt it cracking and breaking.  I've been to the doctor, the lab, the pharmacy, my therapist and then repeated that cycle.  I've had some medication changes, the most annoying apt with the Pyschiatrist that I have to see once a year to sign off on my meds - the woman is a complete ass in my opinion. 

So........now that I feel that I coming back into the land of the living and working hard at making my days meaningful I am ready to carry on with my story - just not today!

There are imprints in your brain that no matter how hard you try to work past them they are there forever stained and marked.  They don't go away.  They are part of your soul.  You don't just "get over it" as some people would like to believe.  You "get around it" the best way that you know how.  You have to find your voice and your words and quietly and gracefully take care of yourself first. 

But........thankfully I can pull it out of my butt when I need to because in the midst of all of this darkness I had my full on, face to face 2 hour interview with a retired RCMP officer who is working on my enhanced security clearance!  I tell you, I was at my best that morning!  I might lose a few battles along the way but I am going to win the war!!!

Good to be back............:-))

Lyin' Eyes ( by the Eagles)

It's the summer of 1977!  I've finished my first year of University and took the train back to Vancouver with all of my "stuff" to spend the summer with my mom in her new store in Princeton.  It was the May long weekend and I took to the bus from Princeton to Vancouver to spend the weekend with my aunt and uncle in North Vancouver. My uncle offered to pick me up at the bus station and deliver me up to North Vancouver.  He took me out for dinner first - The Spaghetti Factory down in Gastown - and I am quite sure that anyone around us would have thought that we were out on a dinner date judging by how he acted. He was laughing and making balloon animals and just generally trying to "impress" me. There was that "weird" feeling inside again but I had no words to explain it.  On one hand it was very nice to be taken out to dinner and doted on but on the other hand it did not feel right in my gut.  Lesson learned - always trust your gut feelings - your gut is your second brain.

After dinner we proceeded to drive over to North Vancouver.  I know that he knew where he was supposed to be going - he'd lived in Vancouver for probably 20 years at that point.  How hard is it to find a street that is one block off of Mountain Highway for heaven's sake?  I know that now,  but at the time I had no clue where we were or where we were supposed to be going.  It was quite dark out by that time and he was making a big fuss over not being able to find the street - driving around and around the dark subdivisions of the North Shore area making turn after turn.  By that point I was really getting scared - I've never been the person who finds getting lost just part of the whole adventure!  I suggested that we stop and ask for directions at a gas station and it was clear to him that I was not at all comfortable.  Amazingly, within about 5 minutes - presto - there we were at Pierard Drive!  There is no doubt in my mind that he was driving in circles for the sole purpose of trying to find an opportunity or the guts to make a move on me. Sunday afternoon my aunt and uncle dropped me off at an open house you were having for you to take me to dinner at then over to catch my bus home. 

And all the time that we were driving around.........he had a cassette tape of the Eagles playing.......a black car with burgundy interior.........some things you just never forget.

Horse Drawn Sleigh Rides.........

Seventeen years old........in 1976 when I was 17 I was more like today`s 14 year old.  I was not a social butterfly in high school, I was not at all the important parties on the weekend, I never came to school on Monday with a low cut shirt and a neckful of hickies to show everyone - my big claim to fame was that I frequented the indoor smoking area - wow! I babysat for most of the local RCMP families, I taught piano and theory lessons during the week and practiced my own piano studies for my exams, I worked weekends at a local drugstore.  In hindsight - my mom had it pretty easy with me!  When I graduated from high school I knew 1 thing - I was going to the University of Sask. enrolled in the College of Education.  Not because I had always dreamed of being a teacher and going away to school......because my dad said I was going to university and there would be no discussion.  Why the College of Education - because I had no idea what choices I might have had, my Grandmother had taught school forever ( even in the little one room school house) and because somehow I won the local Teacher`s Scholarship for a first year Education student. My life was planned out except for one thing.........I didn`t plan it.  I was homesick, I didn`t want to be there, I was so socially and emotionally delayed - I was the proverbial fish out of water.

Needless to say I was one happy person to board a plane out of Saskatoon in December of 1976 to go to Coquitlam and be with my family for a month.  I had rec`d letters from my mom every week sharing with me her plan to buy a store in Princeton  - a gift and grocery store - the big city of Coquitlam was not for her and my uncle, being a real estate agent, had found the perfect place for her in Princeton.  We made a trip up there during my stay that Christmas and oddly enough the one very vivid memory of that trip that I have - my uncle got into the back seat and specifically asked me to sit beside him.  Weird but very complimentary in a back handed way. We all had Christmas dinner together and as a family spent more time together thru out that month.  After I flew back to Saskatoon and settled in for the second half of my first year a strange letter came in the mail one day.  My uncle wrote to me that he was envious of all of the boys at University who would be the ones to sit beside me during the long cold winter evenings and go on horse drawn sleigh rides with me.  Hello, I was in Saskatoon going to school - not filming an episode of Little House on the Prairie.  And....how weird is it that your uncle is envious of boys being around his niece.........at the time I had no clue just how weird this was........I was being groomed and I had this person who was only 12 years older than me writing to me at university.  Oh God how I wish I could turn the clock back 35 years. 

Stalking his prey, tiptoeing around in the forest, carefully covering his tracks and camoflauging his true existance,  tossing out bits of tempting treats to lure his prey out into the open and away from the safety of the herd.....always adjusting his view in the sights of his rifle....the hunter waits patiently in silence for that one perfect shot..............

A hunter is born.......

Here I sit, Esme is asleep across my feet - her way of not letting me out of her sight unnanounced - and needing to do 2 things.  1. Hit the "open" button on the 2010 Tax Return software and 2. Catch my flight on the next space shuttle.  Since I'm not at all packed for my trip to the moon that would leave option #1.....for a few more minutes anyway!

I need to back up in my story a bit to give you more of an idea of how my uncle worked his way into our world. I had forgotten to mention that 2 years prior to my mother leaving Swift Current her mother had died quite suddenly.  Her trip to Vernon to bury her mother was the first time that she had reconnected with some of her siblings - one of them being her brother, my eventual torturer.  She was quite taken with him I think.  He was very urban and quite successful at his career.  Perhaps the most defining moment for her during that occasion was the night right after my Grandmother's burial.  Each of her 9 children had taken a red rose from the casket spray and somehow during the night my uncle realized that he had lost his rose.  In the middle of a February night he walked quite a distance to the cemetary, found her grave and took another rose from the spray of flowers laying on top of her grave.  My mother, being ever maternal, thought that this was the most heroic and stoic event and she spoke almost reverantly about him after she returned home.  He called our home a few times - family squabbles regarding the will, etc. had begun in earnest and he was the one sibling that my mother seemed to believe in and even told him on the phone that he was her favourite brother. There was a large age difference between the 2 of them and I really think that my mother conveyed a message of "motherly" love to my uncle.  I think that he knew that but I also think that he knew that he had his "foor in the door" to my world. At that point all he would have had known about me was the what the family photos that my mother took with her to Vernon would have shown. A hunter stalks his prey, slowly, quietly, never wanting to step on a branch or a twig that could shatter the silence and catch the calm, gentle doe feeding on the grass.  No, the hunter has patience, the hunter waits to have that doe in the crosshairs of his scope, waits for that moment when she is singled out from her herd and unsuspecting of any tragedy about to befall her - he waits until he has the perfect clean shot - and then...........

And so it begins........

Oh my.....still recovering from a rather major "crash". Life handed me the perfect storm of about 5 things all at one time and my boat was swamped and no life jacket to grab onto.  Without sounding like a big drama queen - this was a physical and emotional slap upside the head.  Physically - it never even occured to me that my thryoid issue could be having a flare up - normally I can feel it in my throat within days of the levels risisng but I guess I missed the signs of this one 'cause it was a beauty.  I had gone to the doctor looking like a homeless person - 2nd day of the same pajamas, head by bed, and eyes that looked like the rings of Saturn. I held myself together long enough for him to shut the door and then all bets were off.  I have the best doctor and he never just pats me on the head and suggests it might be "stress".  He's been on this long journey with me and he knows that when I crash - I crash.  He asked me the question that all doctors have to ask their patients who look like I did - "Do you feel you are in danger of hurting yourself?".  No, I'm not finished with a few people yet so I'm staying around to see how that all plays out. ( to say “yes” gets you a one way ticket to the pysch ward in Langley which is about the worst place in the world to ever end up. Never say “yes”)    Then he looked at his computer screen and reminded me that my 6 month check of my TSH levels was about 13 months overdue so how about I pop over to the lab on the way home and have that done.  Off I went to the lab - still looking like a hobo, in fact a little too off the wall because the tech that was taking my blood actually looked at my Medic Alert bracelet and asked if I was diabetic - and then I dragged my butt back home still full of despair and anxiety and the insidious fear that PTSD leaves you with.  Well, bit of shock the next day when the dr's office calls and asks me to get my butt back down there ASAP.  This time I actually was dressed!  I sat down in the same chair, feeling the same "I can't fight this anymore" feeling,  when in came the dr with a smile on his face and the words "good news - your TSH levels are 3 times higher than they should be!"  I swear my jaw hit the floor - I was totally shocked.  Not only was I dealing with wacked out TSH levels but that issue also played havoc with my regular meds and basically nothing was acting like it was supposed to. New prescription for my thyroid pills which sadly, take a few weeks to build up enough in my system to actually start working and orders for a new blood draw in 2 months.  This could take awhile to find the amount of meds I have to take to compensate for what my body isn't making to bring the level back down to "normal". Somehow tho' having a logical answer for my illogical feelings was very soothing.

And while my body was running its own personal little horror show 2 events occured within days of each other that kinda blew my heart apart.  I can cope with the physical and the emotional just not all at one time.  Mix the two and I'm done like dinner.

Time to pick up the thread of the story where I last left off  - my family moving to BC. It was arranged that I would fly out to see them just before I left for University in the fall. My mother was settled into a rental home in Coquitlam that some friends of hers had helped her find.  Life seemed to be sorting itself out for the 4 of them - at least on the exterior.  My mother had also made contact with her brother and sister that lived in Vancouver and North Vancouver.  I had met my uncle once when I was quite young and did not really remember him.  He was quite a bit younger than my mother and they had never really connected as siblings.  She was however quite enjoying seeing her family again and invited my uncle and his then girlfriend over to dinner while I was visiting.  I answered the door to find a very handsome, Westside/Kitsilano guy with a very attractive girlfriend named Barbara.  As the evening wore on the conversation took a bit of a turn and I found myself being complimented and spoken to by my uncle somewhat as if we were 2 strangers and he was trying to "pick me up".  He complimented me far more than I think would be considered "normal" and paid more attention to me than to his girlfriend.  When they left at the end of the evening his hug goodbye was more than the perfunctory family hug.  Odd.  This all took place in my mother's living room in front of everyone there. 

Over the years I have learned the term "grooming".  Grooming is the process where abusers slowly worm their way into their victim's world, it's such a subtle process that no one even notices, especially the victim.  Most pedofiles and family abusers don't make a move on their target right away - they need to earn the "trust" of the victim and slowly and insidiously suck them into their eerie world of wickedness.  That evening, in front of my family and his girlfriend, my uncle had begun the "grooming" process.

In her eyes, I see pure love

Well since my Costco moment and my last post I have to say that I managed to pull the rug right out from under my feet and it has taken this long to get back up and ready to go for another round in the boxing ring of life!

I know that my blog is kinda all over the map - it's not in chronological order at the moment but one day it will be in a book and with the help of a wise editor ( thank you Darcy) it will be much more linear. What I am finding at the moment is that writing about some of these earlier experiences in life does seem to be "retraumatizing" ( a therapeutic description for when life bites you on the butt again) and for me, I need to take some time between those posts to keep myself on track.

Let me tell you the story of how an angel with 4 paws, deep brown eyes and blonde hair came into my life.  I've never had a dog, wasn't getting a dog, wasn't up for discussion - talk to the hand.  My doctor and my therapist both worked me over pretty good - in a kind and methodical way! - that I needed a dog to help me cope with my anxiety, panic disorder and PTSD.  I do wear a Medic Alert bracelet - which I did have to use once - but the idea was to try to find a way to grasp onto to something that was calming and reassuring and could be my words for me when I could not use them myself.  Being a runner myself it was also a chance for me to have a companion on the trails with me running like the wind together!

Life comes at you fast man.......on Tuesday May 11, 2009 I was not getting a dog.  Oh I had explored the idea mostly to placate everyone but frankly, the thought of looking after any creature other than myself was daunting to say the least.  A friend of a friend who's daughter was friends with another lady's daughter told my friend that there was about to be a litter of golden retrievers born any day and I needed to get my act together and get one of those puppies. Huh?  You're kidding me right? I need a puppy?  NOT.  But what had led to this point was the fact that I had been dog sitting for my friend's mom off and on and they have the most awesome 10 year old Golden named Scout.  It did not go unseen by those that were campaining for me to have a dog that when I was with Scout I was a much calmer and collected human being.

And so on the morning of May 13th, 2009 into the world came 8 puppies.  Being that I was the last one to the party I had to wait for 2 other people to pick their choice of the 3 little girls left but I knew which one I wanted the moment I saw them at 48 hours old. She was the littlest girl and the blondest and I just felt in my heart that she was sent from "above" to fall into my life and I needed her as much as she needed me.  I was so blessed to have had the chance to have a family raised puppy and because they lived 4 blocks away I was invited and welcomed to come over anytime and visit all of the puppies and the momma and the grandma. I spent so many hours in Laurel's backyard that summer - the puppies would be out on a blanket in the sunshine and I could just be there with them and hold them and feel "love".  Some days I just sat there and cried.  When the last puppy was chosen I was so lucky to have Esme saved for me.  Esme is from the Old French and means "beloved".  Laurel guided me thru the new mom stage - first Esme came home for 2 hours at a time, then she came for overnight visits and then finally, one Monday at lunchtime - I took my puppy home.  Now, I have never had children so this was my "deer in the headlights" experience of taking home a "baby" that I knew nothing about raising.  Laurel very wisely and calmly told me "Michelle, she will tell you what she needs".  And so off we went to puppyhood and all the joys and trials that that brings.

Today Esme is almost 2 years old.  She goes everywhere with me that we can go and sometimes she has to wait in the car but often times she gets to come into the "dog" friendly stores that we have made a conscience choice to shop at. They know her and love her visits and she is treated like a queen! As a matter of fact when we go to Windsor Plywood it's all about the dog and I am just kinda on the end of the leash - one would think that she had the Visa card and list of things to buy!!  She and I have been in obedience classes since she was 12 weeks old and she is now a St. John's Ambulance accredited therapy dog. Sharing her love and comfort is a great gift for both her and I. 

Esme follows me everywhere - she lays on the bathmat while I have a shower! and she knows immediately when I am having a bad day or about to crash and burn.  She never leaves my side in those moments and has been known to stand between me and someone else when she knows I am struggling. 

This precious angel was truly sent especially for me at a time when I was ready for her ( but didn't know it!) and she has been my saviour so many many times. In her eyes, I see pure love.  I see the trust that she has in me, the need for her to be my protector and the bond that we have is unbelieveably strong. She came to me as a therapy dog and now I am so blessed to be able to share her amazing gifts with other people who need a moment of pure unconditional deep true love.

Lost and all alone..........

Our new life - my mom, my 2 sisters and I.......my brother had stayed with my dad........ left the only world we knew and moved into the city, to an area that was not the most pleasant, to a life we had never imagined would be ours.

My father had laid down the gauntlet with the ultimatum that if my brother went with his mom and his sisters he would never ever inherit the family farm.  My brother was the only son of a man who was the only child so the bloodline ended there.  At 8 years old my poor brother was forced to make a decision that most adults could not even dream of making.  Sadly, my father was far from a great role model and my brother more or less raised himself. Today my brother is an amazing man.......he married a wonderful girl that he met at high school and they raised a beautiful, intelligent daughter who is now in University. 

One important note:  My mother had given my father an amazing opportunity - clean up your act, stop drinking, stay sober for a year and we will be back. What a gift - which was thrown out with yesterday's trash.  My father not only continued to drink but with wild abandon and created oh so much heartache and headache for those in his life.

My mother's divorce decree nici came thru and although she was granted sole custody of all of her children her lawyer gave her some very very wise advice - leave my brother with my father and allow my brother to come to her on his terms willingly.  To force him to move would be disastrous.  Weekend visitations arrived.......each of us saw those weekends thru different eyes.  I was angry with my father, angry that he was articulate in his disgust for me because in his eyes " I had sided with my mother".  I was angry because the first Friday that he picked us up he took us to dinner at the K Motel restaurant and what did he do? He cried.  Mortifying to a 15 year old.  Ridiculous to a 15 year old who knew that he had brought all of this on himself. Disgust because it was "all about him".  Another Saturday morning he took us into town and to visit one of his drinking buddies.  So our visit with our dad took place watching him visit with his crony.  I was so done with that sideshow. 

By then my mother had taken her portion of the divorce settlement and bought a sweet older house up near the hospital.  She was into "Flip That House" before HGTV even existed!! She turned it into a delightful house and promptly put it up for sale and moved kitty corner across the street to a bigger house and "Flip That House" started all over again! I loved both of those houses and the joy it brought to my mom to be busy and happy.  I spent most weekends on my own as my mom worked part time at a flower show - but I loved being on my own.  I baked, I sewed, I puttered.......my siblings were at my dad's and the house was quiet.

But as per usual.......no gentle serene life for us.......no siree........for some reason I think my dad wanted my mom to fail and to fall on her face and come running back to him. This was the beginning of the second perfect storm.

Three things that I remember vividly as if they happened yesterday.........in the days of simpler life all kids walked to school - from kindergarten to Grade 12.  My littlest sister walked to and from kindergarten freely but one day.....she did not come home.  And oh my God.......the world blew apart. She was with my dad but how she came to be with my dad has so many variations of the "truth".  There are many stories but I think the realisitic person would say that a 5 year old did not walk 5 miles from school to my dad's farm.  But that was one of the version of events.  It was said that she walked out that way and my father saw her and picked her up.  Ok....highly unlikely but everyone is entitled their version of events no matter how screwed up they are.  The police organized her safe return.

My father also disowned me.  He had his will changed.  In his mind I had abandoned him.  I did not receive birthday cards, Christmas cards .......and the piece d'restance was the year he outfitted all 3 of my siblings with new ski equipment from top to bottom and took then to Lake Louise/Banff to ski.  I, on the other hand.....had become invisible.  Whether he knew it or not it was my mother that he hurt the most with these actions. I came to expect nothing and then I wasn't surprised.  I grew to hate a man who would cast aside his daughter because she didn't give him the "pass" that the rest of the world continually did. 

The final blow was a direct hit. Unbeknownst to my dad the fellow who had moved in across the street from us was an RCMP officer.  The police contacted my mother and told her that my father had been spotted on numerous occasions parked kitty corner from our house ( we lived on a corner lot) with his car facing our house and had open liquor in the car. A stalker ahead of his time!  His last hurrah was to be caught in this position with a loaded shotgun in the car.  Now, nothing good can ever come from an inebriated man with a weapon. The police advised my mom that my father's actions were escalating and now would be a very good time to leave the city.  Huh, so my dad doesn't get his sorry ass hauled off to jail but we get to put our house up for sale and my mother and my sisters moved 2 provinces away.  This was the summer of my graduation ( and what a fiasco that was until my father just announced he would not be attending because he did not have a daughter in Grade 12) and things moved fast.  The For Sale sign went up on the house, the moving van came and loaded up and headed west with my mom, her new beau ( my father in carnate) and my 2 sisters - both very upset about moving.  The house sold weeks after they left. I stayed with friends because I was working for the summer and then off to University in the fall.  The day the moving van left and I said good bye to my family I walked into that empty, sad house where so many hopes and dreams lay shattered amongst the dust and I sank down on the living room carpet and sobbed.  I cried for a life that should never have come to this.  I cried for a "normal" world that I wanted so badly.  I missed my family so much and I knew that my world was forever changed.  Well, I thought my world was forever changed - what I did't know is that in about 3 months time it was going to be CHANGED forever. Sad sad times. 17 years old, a father who really hated me and whom I hated just as much, a mother so far away and buried in a brand new mess and I was lost. So very very lost.

The Emporer's New Clothes

Abandoned child syndrome is a behavioral or psychological condition that results from the loss of one or both parents. Abandonment may be physical (the parent is not present in the child's life) or emotional (the parent withholds affection, nurturing, or stimulation).

From Wikipedia

Here I am in Costco about to heave a 50 pound bag of dog food into my cart when I am struck by a direct hit to the heart by the Abandoment Fairy. Suddenly, I cannot breathe, my heart hurts and feels like it is about to fracture into pieces, the tears are pouring down my cheeks and I feel liked a complete idiot in front of all of these people who are trying so hard not to look at me. I am trapped at the back of the store in the back corner and I cannot bring myself to do anything more than lean against my cart and hope that I can become as invisible as the Emporer's New Clothes.

My friend who is an RCMP officer is on duty so I send her a text - please help me - I am having an all out melt down in Costo.  She is my one hope for this moment as my therapist is booked with clients and just cannot jump to my rescue even tho if he could he would. I don't even care if she arrives in her uniform in a marked car - I just want someone to come and get me.  She texts me back that she is so tied up that she cannot come to get me but she would phone my therapist. I know she feels badly that she can't come and that adds another layer of "guilt" because I try so hard not to be a "needy" friend.  Won't work I text her back.  Now I am really lost and on my own. Esme is in the car and if I can just find my way out of the store, past all of the people in the food court, past all of the people in line at customer service, past all of the people waiting to be checked out with their purchases then I can get to Esme and she will help me breathe.  Damn you Costco for not allowing my therapy dog to come with me into the store. I get to the car, I sit with Esme, she rests her soft and gentle head on me and I look deep into her beautiful brown eyes into that soul of pure love and slowly I can start to breathe enough to gather myself  to drive home and there Esme and I stay for the next 2 days......we go out only for her bathroom breaks. We go to the river once by ourselves for her to swim and for me to sit on the shore and cry.  This happened 3 weeks ago today at about 11am. It seems that I will forever be haunted.

What triggered this episode?  Well the "perfect storm" that blew in layer by layer for about 4 days.  Each layer on its own is manageable but when the layers come one on top of each other I simply cannot hang on and gradually I feel that smothering " I can't breathe" feeling and then when I least expect it - wham, a direct blow to the heart. I want to crawl into the fetal position and just lay down and die but I can't.  Life does not afford me that luxury.  I have to "fake it 'til I make it" or in this case - get the heck out of the store.

My parents never ever meant for this legacy of lost love to be my consant source of challenge.  They parented the best that they could, given the parenting practices of that generation and based on their own childhood experiences with their parents.  What happened to their marriage and to the subsequent experiences we 4 children had were not in their master game plan.  I do not blame them directly for what I live with on a daily basis.  It is what it is. 

Children suffer many forms of "abandonment" and often no one actually physically abandons them but rather it is the emotional and pyschological abandonment that can often create the life long battle. In my life, I was "abandoned" on every level........not to sound dramatic but to just be "textbook" about this issue. At 17 years of age the "abandonment" set me up for 20 years of sexual abuse at the hands of a relative. I was very much a young 17 year old.......far from the 17 year olds of today.  I was starving for attention and "love" and I became the prey that walked right into the crosshairs of a champion bounty hunter. Once I started the process with the RCMP and they began their direct and forcefull interrogation of this molester information started to be unearthed that has led my police officer, my therapist, my trauma worker and I to all believe that there is a very good chance that my mother knew what was going on but for some reason felt unable to intervene.  Abandoment at its most sublest and it hits like a sledge hammer 25 years after the abuse began.

I am unable to share those thoughts because even tho the police recommended a laundry list of charges against this person the Crown Counsel could not follow thru due to a change in the Criminal Code years ago and thus, hands tied, they could not formally charge this person and so, there are "facts", etc. that I have to be very careful about speaking about.  But know this - this abuser did actually admit to this abuse in front of my therapist - so we all know that he knows he did it, the police know that he did it (they interrogated him so well that they got him to the point of almost saying THE WORD but they just could not get that word on tape.) Crown knows that he did it but......a change in the Criminal Code saved his sorry ass from being hung out to dry. Sexual abuse cases have no statute of limitations but they are subject to being handled under the Code as it was written at the time of the offense.  We have a "legal" system not a "justice" system.

And so yesterday I saw my therapist for the first time since my experience in Costco and I explain the layers that led up to the final trigger that led to the implosion.  I cry, he listens, I cry some more and he nods his head.  He knows that I can verbalize the feelings and the triggers and that I learned what this heart shattering feeling is.  He knows that he has taught me the pyschological underpinnings of this issue. But he also knows that knowing the facts is not the same as feeling the feeling. We talk some more and I leave - completely exhausted and drained from reliving the moments and sharing that hurt and trying to box it up and put it up on the shelf with the other boxes labelled "Abandonment Issues".  I walk out into the sunshine and I vow to try to make it a better day.  And it was......and it always will be. Time does not heal all wounds but time affords me the luxury of learning how to live with the fallout.

There will be many more "Costco" moments to come - this I know. It is what it is. 

One piece at a time

How would I describe the last 4 years of "work" - which therapy is by the way! How would I describe myself then - when I arrived at my first therapy appointment I felt quite confident, quite in control and really, I just needed a few excercises to help me deal with this anxiety thing that had cropped up over the past few months.  Surely, some techniques on a hand out would be just the ticket.  Apparently not. My therapist has had 30+ years of experience working with all types of clients and he can spot a problem a mile away.  He is also wise enough to know that that problem must rise to the surface on its own - one cannot read a book or do some breathing excercises and all will be well.  Anxiety is a symptom of something much deeper. So, we chit chatted and for a few weeks danced around the elephant in the room and then........it happened.......I needed to disclose what had happened.  He nodded.....wise man that he is he knew that I would find my trust, my time and my safe spot to blurt it out.  And with that we started our long road together.

What happened over the course of the first year is that I became this jigsaw puzzle of various pieces of my life.  I was a box of loose pieces that needed to be put together in order to be a whole picture. So many many times I felt like my puzzle was coming together and then something would happen and I ended up feeling like my puzzle had been knocked onto the floor and had broken apart yet again.  " A million little pieces" is a phrase I wore out I used it so often.  Week by week and month by month more of the puzzle would be assembled before it was knocked off the table yet again. I learned how to put that puzzle back together faster each time but still when I was knocked off of the table I felt broken and scattered and a heap of pieces on the floor. There were police interviews, court dates set and cancelled the day before, emails and voice mails left for someone, anyone to tell me what the hell was going on with my file, files sent to Crown Counsel where they entered into the great white abyss known as the gatekeeping committee, files were sent back to the police, more interviewing, more messages left trying to find out why and what to do.  An endless stream of your life being paraded in front of people who are trying so hard to help you but the "system" keeps getting in the way.

Many times I sat under the quilt on the couch, shaking, crying, feeling completely abandoned and scared to even breathe. Broken again into a million little pieces laying on the floor and no energy left to try to even pick them up. But piece by piece I have put my puzzle back together and yes, even today those pieces sometimes end up back on the floor but my puzzle stays on the table waiting for the holes to be refilled.  Piece by piece I have worked to put together my new life. One piece at a time.

Don't stop picking up your pieces and putting them back together.  Sometimes it is one piece a day and sometimes you find all of the blue sky pieces and suddenly you have sky in your puzzle.  Don't be afraid if your puzzle falls off the table - just breathe.......and pick it up one piece at a time.

The Summer of '72

The summer that changed the direction of 6 peoples' lives. I was 14 years old with 2 months of summer fun ahead of me that only a kid can look forward to! It was 1972 - which seems a life time ago and yet seems like yesterday.  My youngest sister was 4 years old and had beautiful long blonde hair. From the moment we started summer vacation there seemed to be a huge shift of "normalcy" in our world. 

My mother disappeared for the summer. No, she did not go far away - just down the hall to her bedroom where she took to her bed for the summer. At the time it was just understood that she was not feeling well. As the oldest it fell upon me to look after the household, cook, clean, can the fruit that my mother always had in previous summers, make the jams and jellies to be stored along side the quarts and quarts of fruit and look after my 4 year old sister as best I could.  My other siblings were 8 and 12 at the time and they just floated along somewhere in between the silent chaos and the turbulent flareups.  Our grandparents lived in a house right next door to us on our farm and once a week my grandmother would take me to town so that I could do the grocery shopping. One day my mother called me into the bedroom and handed me some money.  Her request - that I take my 4 year old sister and have her long beautiful hair cut.  It seems that I had not been able to keep it braided and tidy as my mom had done for all of her girls when we were young.  French braids that were so tight they pulled your eyes back to the side of your head!  Done every Sunday night after bathtime and then the bottoms undone every morning and rebraided.  Once a week the entire braids came out and our heads hurt like crazy! My mother was very upset about having my sister's hair cut - at 14 I didn't understand the deep underlying meaning of this request - now, to me it seems like she knew she was losing a battle with her "illness".  The summer went on and soon it was time to go back to school. The fall of Grade 9 - my last year of junior high.  One day, off we 3 went to school on the bus and when we came home my Grandmother met us at the door and told us that our mother was in the hospital.  According to my Grandmother, my father had come in from outside and been unable to rouse my mother and called an ambulance.  Very frightening times for 4 children who really had no idea just what demons were lurking in our home.

Today, I now recognize that my mother was severely depressed.  It is my belief that once she saw her children off to school that she attempted suicide. I have no proof of that but having battled depression, anxiety, PTSD and panic disorder myself I see the undeniable symptoms of a woman in deep deep depression.  A subject that the medical community did not really understand or talk about 40 years ago.  My mother was deemed to have had a nervous breakdown and one day when I was visiting her in the hospital she told me that our doctor had told her that he would not release her from the hospital until she agreed to seperate from my father.  She was a patient in the hospital for over 2 weeks. By this time my father was a full fledged member of the Drinking and Driving club and more than once was told by a judge to join AA. 

I have another memory of Hallowe'en that year where my mother was not present.  I can't recall where she was but I just know that she wasn't home and Hallowe'en costumes and trick or treating were not the happy memories of years prior.  I wish I could remember more of this time but it's gone or tucked away somewhere deep inside my head.

The fundamental explosion in our family occured the weekend of Nov 11th.  My birthday is Nov 8 and that year I turned 15.  It was so obvious that our parents were headed for a seperation and the mood in our home had become very tense and a bit of a battlefield.  My father was very drunk that night and had issued the threat that he was going to go downstairs and shoot himself. With that he staggered downstairs to his office where he had some of his hunting rifles.  I followed in hot pursuit to try to "talk" to him and ended up wrestling a rifle out of his hands.  Now, in hindsight he was probably too drunk to even load the damn thing never mind shoot straight but when you are 15 years old you don't have that kind of foresight.  And that night......was the beginning of the formal end to my parents' marriage and our home broke apart.  My mother took me with her to see a lawyer - an act that my father never forgot or forgave me for - and in short order had rented a house, spoke to all of our teachers to advise them of what was transpiring and ordered a moving van. The day the moving van arrived we were at school however my father had one last hurrah - he took the keys to the car away from my mother and she and my little sister rode to town with the movers who then took her to a car rental agency where she rented a cute dark blue Volkswagon bug!  And thus began our new life - single parent kids in a dual parent society living in a rental home in one of the less than desireable areas and with no money. Happy 15th birthday to me.